The High-School Juniors With $70,000-a-Year Job Offers

Elijah Rios won’t graduate from high school until next year, but he already has a job offer—one that pays $68,000 a year.

Rios, 17 years old, is a junior taking welding classes at Father Judge, a Catholic high school in Philadelphia that works closely with companies looking for workers in the skilled trades. Employers are dealing with a shortage of such workers as baby boomers retire. They have increasingly begun courting high-school students like Rios—a hiring strategy they say is likely to become even more crucial in the coming years.

by Te-Ping Chen